ofthe SAME TREE

make landfall at the Isthmus of Kra or at Kedah. 78 Goods were then transported
via isthmian and peninsular waterways and land portage routes to the
Gulf of Siam, then on to the Lower Mekong, and finally to central Vietnam
before continuing on the final leg to China. At this eastern end of the Sea
of Malayu were settlements termed the “Oc Eo Culture” by the Vietnamese
archaeologists, as well as the various Cham unities in central Vietnam comprising
river valleys and their corresponding upland areas.
In 1944, Louis Malleret provided the first comprehensive study of Oc
Eo. 79 Artifacts found at the site have a distinctive style with strong similarities
to Dong Son and Sa Huynh cultures, which suggests an indigenous development.
Moreover, archaeologists interpret the common features of Oc Eo’s
assemblage with those found at sites on the Chao Phraya and Irrawaddy valleys
as evidence of a new settlement pattern of urban centers arising in the
major river valleys in mainland Southeast Asia. Based on these archaeological
finds, Himanshu Ray believes there was a prior “local sailing network”
between the coast of Vietnam and the southern coast of Burma. This network
was then linked to two others, one extending to Orissa and Bengal, and the
other to the Tamil coast in India. 80
Excavations at the Oc Eo–Ba Thê complex indicate that the earlier trade
site on low-lying ground in Oc Eo was abandoned between the late third and
fourth centuries. In the following two centuries there was renewed activity
in the Oc Eo cultural complex, marked by brick temples and burial sites on
the lower slopes of the Ba Thê mountain and on small mounds in the flood
plain of Oc Eo. Oc Eo was crossed by a grid of canals, with the longest extending
in a northeast direction to Angkor Borei and southwest to the coast. The
well-known early finds of Roman coins and Indian artifacts in Oc Eo clearly
point to its entrepot role in maritime trade. An inscription dated either 639
or 644 CE describes a practice at a Brahmanical temple where donors were
presented with imported cloth. 81 The cloth could very well have been transported
from southern India to a port on peninsular Burma and Thailand or
the northern Malay Peninsula, then across the South China Sea to the Lower
Mekong. Other evidence of local manufacture of gold, tin, and bronze ornaments,
beads, pottery, and other objects further suggests that Oc Eo may have
gradually developed into an “industrial” site for the production of goods for
export abroad and to the interior via the extensive canal system linking Oc Eo
to Angkor Borei and beyond. 82
Stratigraphic excavation in Angkor Borei provides evidence of the site’s
occupation since the fourth century BCE but with intensive occupation
between c. 200 BCE and 200 CE. The city may have peaked in the sixth and
seventh centuries, and although the seat of power moved northward in the
latter century, the city continued to be occupied and only declined sometime
Malayu Antecedents 41